Robert Brody - Böcker

Carlos Fuentes is a master of modern world literature. With the translation of his major works into English and other languages, his reputation has surpassed the boundaries of his native Mexico and of Hispanic literature and has become international. Now each new novel stimulates popular and scholarly reviews in periodicals from Mexico City and Buenos Aires to Paris and New York. Carlos Fuentes: A Critical View is the first full-scale examination in English of this major writer's work. The range and diversity of this critical view are remarkable and reflect similar characteristics in the creative work of Carlos Fuentes, a man of formidable intellectual energy and curiosity. The whole of Fuentes' work is encompassed by Luis Leal as he explores history and myth in the writer's narrative. Insightful new views of single works are provided by other well-known scholars, such as Roberto GonzÁlez EchevarrÍa, writing on Fuentes' extraordinary Terra Nostra, and Margaret Sayers Peden, exploring Distant Relations, for which she served as authorized translator. Here too are fresh approaches to Fuentes' other novels, among them Where the Air Is Clear, Aura, and The Hydra Head, as well as an examination by John Brushwood of the writer's short fiction and a look by Merlin Forster at Fuentes the playwright. Lanin Gyurko reaches outside Fuentes' canon for his fascinating study of the influence of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane on The Death of Artemio Cruz. Manuel DurÁn and George Wing consider Fuentes in his role as critic of both literature and art. Carlos Fuentes: A Critical View has been prepared with the writer's many English-speaking readers in mind. Quotations are most frequently from standard, readily available English translations of Fuentes' works. A valuable chronology of the writer's life rounds off the volume.

The Geonic period from about the late sixth to mid-eleventh centuries is of crucial importance in the history of Judaism. The Geonim, for whom this era is named, were the heads of the ancient talmudic academies of Babylonia. They gained ascendancy over the older Palestinian center of Judaism and were recognized as the leading religious and spiritual authorities by most of the world’s Jewish population. The Geonim and their circles enshrined the Babylonian Talmud as the central canonical work of rabbinic literature and the leading guide to religious practice, and it was a predominantly Babylonian version of Judaism that was transplanted to newer centers of Judaism in North Africa and Europe. Robert Brody’s book—the first survey in English of the Geonic period in almost a century—focuses on the cultural milieu of the Geonim and on their intellectual and literary creativity.Brody describes the cultural spheres in which the Geonim were active and the historical and cultural settings within which they functioned. He emphasizes the challenges presented by other Jewish institutions and individuals, ranging from those within the Babylonian Jewish setting—especially the political leadership represented by the Exilarch—to the competing Palestinian Jewish center and to sectarian movements and freethinkers who rejected rabbinic authority altogether. He also describes the variety of ways in which the development of Geonic tradition was affected by the surrounding non-Jewish cultures, both Muslim and Christian.

Sa’adyah Gaon was anoutstanding tenth-century Jewish thinker—a prominent rabbi, philosopher, andexegete. He was a pioneer in the fields in which he toiled, and was aninspiration and basis for later Jewish writing in all these areas. The lastmajor English-language study of his work was published in 1921, long beforeGenizah research changed the understanding of the time in which he lived.Robert Brody’s masterly work, covering Sa’adyah’s biography and his main areasof creativity in an accessible way, is therefore a much-needed reassessment ofan outstanding figure.The opening chapter,on the geonic period that formed the background to Sa’adyah’s life (a period onwhich there are few works in English), is followed by an overview that bringsout the revolutionary aspects of his work and the characteristic features ofhis writings. Subsequent chapters consider his philosophical works; his Biblecommentaries; his pioneering linguistic work; his poetry; his halakhic activity(including an examination of his use of the Palestinian Talmud compared to thatof the Babylonian Talmud); and his activity as a polemicist, notably againstthe Karaites. An Epilogue sums up his importance in medieval Jewish culture.Particularly valuable features of the book are thecopious quotations from Sa’adyah’s works, which facilitate familiarity with hisstyle as well as his ideas; the clarity in presenting complex and difficultconcepts; the constant assessment of his relationship to his predecessors inhis various fields of study and his own unique contributions to each field; andthe contextualization of his contribution within the political, cultural, andreligious climate of his times so that both revolutionary and conservativeelements in his thought can be identified and evaluated.